A Critique of the Hungarian Film 'Just the Wind' by Laura Lassiaz and Manon Grandpaul

« Just the wind » deals with a Romany family composed of a grand-father, the mother, a daughter and a brother. The mother works in a cleaning company and she is so poor. We can see their everyday life but only one day in their life. At the beginning, we can see the daughter call her father to have a Skype conversation. He lives in Canada and all the family has to rejoin him but he doesn’t have enough money. She talks to him about her fears because, a similar family was killed the day before. We see then the day of the family: the mother goes to work, the daughter goes to school but she can’t stay here. The brother who spends time away from school time has to nothing occupy himself. With this day, we can see the extreme poverty which afflicts this family. They have a house without electricity and water. They don’t have any lights. The living conditions appear so difficult for us.

At the end of this day, the family goes to sleep and the daughter hears some sounds. Her mother answers “It’s just the wind”. This is the title of the movie. Then, they discover that it is not the wind but people who have a gun. At the end of the movie, everybody dies except the son.

'Just the wind' is denunciation without moralizing. We found this film very slow and boring, we felt no sympathy for the characters and so we quickly lost interest in their fate. A well studied production, beautifully filmed but with few words and a tragic story about people who suffer from insecurity and racism.

In conclusion, we follow 24 hours in the life of a Roma family discovering their appalling conditions made worse because they are excluded from other inhabitants of their village because of their nationality.

This film is an important message against racism.